President Nursultan Nazarbayev may become Kazakhstan's "leader of the nation," with immunity from prosecution and the power to dictate policy after retirement, even though he refused to sign a law that gives him this title.

A solution to such an important for Kazakhstan ecological problem as disposal of waste sulfur depends directly on the world prices for grain. According to specialists, block sulfur deposits that have formed as a result of aggressive oil extraction in Kazakhstan have reached 18.5 million tons. Stored under the open sky, they cause a serious ecological problem during the rainy seasons in the western parts of the republic. At present, there is no scientific way to effectively utilize the sulfur.

Kazakhstan's higher education system is taking a battering from the global financial crisis, jeopardizing Astana's ambitious plans to turn the country into an Asian tiger economy. Thousands of young people face expulsion from universities as they find themselves unable to pay tuition and fees. The government has moved to quell public outcry by fast-tracking measures to assist financially-strapped students.

Ever since the film Borat was released, the word "Kazakh" has tended to provoke sneers on western bank trading floors. Right now, however, it merits more respect – at least as far as the issue of financial restructuring is concerned.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Thursday rejected a draft law to make him "Leader of the Nation" and grant him special powers for life if he resigned, showing he is not about to quit as head of state.

A senior US envoy urged Azerbaijan and Turkey on Wednesday to sign a long-awaited deal he said was crucial for retaining confidence in Western plans to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian gas.

Samruk-Kazyna should expedite the sale of its majority stakes in BTA Bank and Alliance Bank, Kazakhstan's central bank chairman Grigoriy Marchenko stated, saying that the state should not have a major shareholding role in the countries' commercial banks.

Kazakhstan received a downward trend arrow due to a spate of politically motivated libel suits against critical media outlets, a restrictive new internet law, arbitrary arrests of officials and businesspeople, and the grossly deficient judicial proceedings against human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis.

National Security Departments in every country very often used their opportunities to influence country leaders and sometimes to remove unwanted ones from country governance. With the help of secret departments palace revolutions were made, unwanted persons were liquidated; political opponents were imprisoned for many years, sometimes for the whole life. All these illegal and dangerous for any country actions were made either at the suggestion of establishment or at their connivance, when the secret services which were supposed to guarantee security of the country and people, in reality acted and somewhere still act now in their own vested interests.